DeliciousFoodinaBeautiful Country:Nationhoodand Nationalism in Discourseson Food in Contemporary Japan

Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism: Vol. 8, No. 1, 2008

Delicious Food in a Beautiful Country: Nationhood and Nationalism in Discourses on Food in ContemporaryJapan Takeda Hiroko University of Sheffield Abstract The article discusses the recent development of banal forms of nationalism in contemporary Japan by examining a multitude of discourses on food produced by the national government as well as civil organisations working for food safety. Despite the intrinsically hybrid nature marked by the historical trajectory of Japanese food culture, these discourses tend to emphasise and propagate the Japanese element and, in so doing, firmly locate Japanese food as the core of ‘Japaneseness’. In this sense, contemporary food discourse in Japan functions as a powerful biopolitical device by propagating the notion of ‘delicious food in a beautiful country’ on which Japanese people are expected to organise their everyday lives.

Introduction: The ‘Japanese Cuisine’ of the ‘Japanese’ People1 In 1962, when a Japanese pop song was played by a British jazz player, Kenny Ball, the song’s title was changed into ‘sukiyaki’, a well-known Japanese dish, although its lyrics have nothing to do with this Japanese food.2 A year later, the song was introduced into the US with the original Japanese lyrics. It sold a million singles and the original Japanese singer, Sakamoto Kyu¯,3 appeared on popular television programmes. Yet, the title ‘sukiyaki’ remained and, accordingly, one of the first cultural products exported from Japan to the ‘Western’ countries after the Second World War is still associated with a particular Japanese dish. Although we are now only told anecdotes about the reasons why ‘sukiyaki’ was chosen as the 5

Takeda Hiroko: Nationhood and Nationalism in Discourses on Food in Contemporary Japan

title, what happened looks quite simple. Rather than using a clumsy translated title or Japanese words that may be difficult to remember or pronounce for many English audiences, the word ‘sukiyaki’ was taken up because it was a short, familiar Japanese word.4 In other words, the link between the song and its English title/Japanese dish was just reduced to ‘something Japanese’. The association was casually made between a nice song and delicious food and, here, indifference to the content and meaning of ‘Japaneseness’ (in this case, what the song/food is about) is apparent. This anarchic, almost violent, breakdown between the signifier and signified functions in a way to nullify the symbolic function of ‘sukiyaki’ since a representation of Japaneseness destabilises the semiotic order. Roland Barthes also picked up ‘sukiyaki’ to convey his reading of ‘Japan’ as the ‘empire of signs’. For Barthes, ‘sukiyaki’ as food represents the lack of the centre or ‘emptiness’ of the centre that he identified as the essence of ‘Japaneseness’. He observes that ‘sukiyaki has nothing marked about it except its beginning (that tray painted with foodstuffs brought to the table); once ‘‘started,’’ it no longer has moments or distinctive sites: it becomes decentred, like an uninterrupted text’ (Barthes 1982: 22, original emphasis). Indeed, Japanese food seemed to offer Barthes great ‘poetical materials’ to exercise his analysis of e´criture (the writing). He writes: [Hence] Japanese food establishes itself within a reduced system of substance (from the clear to the divisible), in a shimmer of the signifier: these are the elementary characters of the writing, established upon a kind of vacillation of language, and indeed this is what Japanese food appears to be: a written food, tributary to the gestures of division and selection which inscribe the foodstuff, not on the meal tray (nothing to do with photographed food, the gaudy compositions of our women’s magazines), but in a profound space which hierarchises man, table, and universe. For writing is precisely that act which unites in the same labour what could not be apprehended together in the mere flat space of representation (Barthes 1982: 14). Barthes’ reading of Japanese food as the essence of ‘Japaneseness’ certainly has some resonance in Japan. Rather, as observed in numerous cases of food being used as a medium to invent and then embody nationhood (Apparadui 1988; Palmer 1998: 187–190; Holtzman 2006: 368–370), Japanese food has been located at the centre in the catalogue of 6

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discourses on cultural nationalism produced in Japan (Onuki-Tierney 1993; McVeigh 2004: 189–192; Goldstein-Gidono 2001: 76–77). For example, in the bestselling book in 2006, National Dignity (Kokka no hinkaku), which sold more than 2.2 million copies by the end of the year (Yomiuri Shinbun, 6 December 2006, accessed online), the author Fujiwara Masahiko keeps referring to Japanese food as a unique cultural asset that ‘Japan’ can be proud of vis-a`-vis other countries. Just the other day, one of my colleagues from the University of Colorado [where the author used to work] visited my house. I was very surprised to learn that the professor knew the word ‘edamame’ [a boiled green-bean snack in Japanese]. A professor and students from Cambridge who stayed at my house last summer were very impressed by this dish, saying that they had never eaten such delicious food. So, perhaps, there is still no delicious food in Britain (Fujiwara 2005: 134). This passage appears to be a straightforward reflection of exoticised gazes towards ‘sukiyaki’ introduced above, and in this sense, yet again demonstrates the feeding of ‘reversed orientalism’ into the discourses of cultural nationalism in Japan (Ueno 1997; McVeigh 2004: 201–202; Goldstein-Gidono 2001: 84). Simultaneously, the text is organised in a ‘stiff’ and ‘tight’ way through parading well-exhausted stereotypes. An American from Colorado is expected to be ignorant about foreign cultures. Cambridge academics and students are not used to eating delicious food but understand foreign delicacies. Through these notions, the excellence of Japanese food is proved to the readers. In so doing, the passage reiterates what we already knew, whilst closing down possibilities of alternative understandings of Japanese food in an era of globalised food distribution. The ‘edamame’ of which the author is so proud might have been made out of vegetables imported from China or other East/Southeast Asian countries where similar kinds of dishes are consumed (at the end of day, it is a dish of boiled green beans), just as the beef in ‘sukiyaki’ is likely to be imported from Australia, New Zealand or the US where their versions of ‘sukiyaki’ are served at local restaurants. In this way, the nationalist statement through Japanese food included in the most-read book in 2006, makes a stark contrast with the previous two examples of discourses on ‘sukiyaki’. It tends to stamp the meaning of ‘Japanese food’ firmly on the item, and there, the vacillation and ambiguity that the above discourses on ‘sukiyaki’ pose in the form of the destabilisation of the semiotic system is excluded. 7

Takeda Hiroko: Nationhood and Nationalism in Discourses on Food in Contemporary Japan

The book National Dignity is not a one-off example. As many have already discussed, the surge of nationalist sentiment in Japan is noticeable in recent years, resulting in a series of publications on the theme of nationalism and nationhood both in and outside of Japan, including Towards A Beautiful Country (Utsukushi kuni e) written by the former Prime Minister, Abe Shinzo¯5 (Abe 2006; Kitada 2005; Kang and Morris 2002; Oguma 2002; Kersten 1999; Iida 2002; Wilson 2002; Shimazu 2006). The manifestation of nationalism in the twenty-first century in Japan, on the one hand, is conducted in the conventional ways such as antipathetic and antagonistic reactions towards other countries (in particular, towards the US, China and North Korea), a multitude of claims of economic and political superiority and the fostering of patriotic attitudes through education (Matthews 2003; Rose 2006). Yet, as a Japanese psychoanalyst Kayaka Rika has argued by coining the term ‘petit nationalism’ (puti nashonarizumu), today’s sense of nationalism among young Japanese is demonstrated in a more innocent and everyday manner. According to Kayama, ‘petit nationalism’ is rooted in their affirmative feeling of ‘I love Japan’ expressed through their frenzies over football games, books on Japanese language or other ‘cultural’ activities (calligraphy, dance performance or the Japanese lifestyle including food). The love of ‘Japan’ observed among the young Japanese, Kayama continues, tends to be derived from the sense that Japan is a special, beautiful and strong country with ‘unique’ culture and language that they practise every day and hence endorse (Kayama 2002: 13–36). In this sense, ‘petit nationalism’ in contemporary Japan echoes what Michael Billig calls ‘banal nationalism’, which flags up, confirms and reproduces national identity through everyday conduct (Billig 1995). Billig has argued that, despite the thesis of the nation-state withering away under the circumstance in which globalisation progresses (cf. Appadurai 1996), the daily reminder of nationhood is apparent in numerous familiar forms (in political discourses or cultural products) here and there. These reminders are not such exotic or passionate acts as is generally posited for nationalist behaviour. Rather, a national identity is ‘to be found in the embodied habits of social life’. Thus, ‘(i)n so many little ways, the citizenry are daily reminded of their national place in a world of nations’ (Billig 1995: 8). The purpose of this article is to examine the recent development of banal forms of nationalism in contemporary Japan. In order to do so, the article focuses on the discourses on ‘Japanese food’ as a case study. Japanese food has, as discussed earlier, long been recognised as a representation of Japaneseness both inside and outside of Japan and accordingly, it offers us abundant discursive samples for analysis. Furthermore, food discourses are 8

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essentially intertwined with the organisation of everyday conduct. They are meant to be practised by individuals and, in so doing, contribute to shaping both individual everyday life and subjectivity in a particular way. In this sense, food discourses function as a biopolitical device (Foucault 1978: 138–145; Foucault 2007: 120), linking individuals and a multitude of governing bodies including the nation-state (Convey 2000; Lien 2004). Indeed, in many industrially advanced countries including Japan, food is increasingly emerging as a prime political issue, to which the national governments and international organisations are required to pay attention to ‘take care of its population’. Finally, we eat food every day, often without being conscious of our own act of eating. (What do we eat? When and where do we eat? Why do we eat and how do we eat?) In this sense, the act of eating food contains an element of banality similar to that of a ‘flag hanging unnoticed on the public building’, a metonym to which Billig refers in order to explain his idea of ‘banal nationalism’ (Billig 1995: 8). For these reasons, food discourses call for special attention when considering banal forms of nationalism in contemporary Japan. Specifically, the first part of the article briefly outlines how the hybrid nature of ‘Japanese food’ has been constructed, and then examines how the ‘Japanese element’ of this hybridity is emphasised to mark ‘Japaneseness’, particularly in the current circumstances, where the globalisation and diversification of food practice is acknowledged. On this basis, the second section of the article introduces discourses on food circulated through the national healthy eating campaign, implemented by the contemporary Japanese government, and explores how the ‘Japanese elements’ are mobilised to represent a normatively healthy eating practice that will create a ‘delicious’ and ‘healthy’ Japan. The third part of the article turns its focus to discourses produced by food experts and civil movement organisations working for food safety, in which a similar discursive pattern to the government official discourse can be observed. Although these discourses tend to be critical of the government’s food policy, in so doing, they maintain and reproduce a sense of cultural nationalism among the populace. What is ‘Japanese Food’?: The Invention of ‘Japanese Food Culture’ In the contemporary Indian situation, and to some degree generically, cookbooks appear to belong to the literature of exile, of nostalgia and loss (Appadurai 1988: 18). Arjun Appadurai’s classic study of contemporary ‘Indian’ cuisine through cookbooks eloquently delineates the dynamic process of the construction 9

Takeda Hiroko: Nationhood and Nationalism in Discourses on Food in Contemporary Japan

of national cuisine at the intersection of ‘regional and ethnic specialisation’ and ‘the development of overarching, crosscutting national cuisine’ (1988: 22). According to him: The idea of an ‘Indian’ cuisine has emerged because of, rather than despite, the increasing articulation of regional and ethnic cuisines. As in other modalities of identity and ideology in emergent nations, cosmopolitan and parochial expressions enrich and sharpen each other by dialectical interaction. Especially in culinary matters, the melting pot is a myth (Appadurai 1988: 21–22). As in the Indian case, modern Japanese food culture is also characterised by hybridity constructed through the dialectical process between the ethnic and cosmopolitan elements, whilst the national inclination to hybridity in Japan appears to be much stronger. In the Japanese case, the interaction between foreign and indigenous cuisines started in the mid-nineteenth century with the initiation of state-led modernisation. The newly established Meiji government (1868–1912) actively took a role in changing people’s ideas and habits of eating. Prior to this, for example, the consumption of animal food, i.e. meat and dairy products, was generally regarded as taboo due to Buddhist teaching. Such a premodern dietary idea dramatically changed as the national government engaged in propagating the foreign, in particular, Western-style food (including meat and dairy products) and nutritional knowledge (Cwiertka 2002: 19–20; Cwiertka 2004: 122–125). National education, in particular domestic science education6 for girls, was used as the medium to transmit and popularise knowledge and skills of modern cooking and nutrition (Kashiwagi 1995: 80–90; Saito¯ 2002: 24–26). The military diet also contributed to the dissemination of Westernised food (croquettes, bread, hamburger steak, pork curry stew, to name but a few) among not only conscripted soldiers but also the general public (Cwiertka 2002: 14–19). The active role taken by the state in the attempt to change the national diet was motivated by the political agenda of building a strong nation-state. As illustrated by the slogan ‘enrich the country, strengthen the military’ (fukoku kyo¯hei), the Japanese government in the late nineteenth century was so aware of its vulnerable position in the then international system as a ‘late-comer’ that its political agenda was devoted to rapid industrialisation and the building-up of the national military. In this process, the quantity and quality of human resources (would-be soldiers and industrial workers) was focused upon by the policy-making elite, leading them to pay 10

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particular attention to the state of nutrition of the population (Kashiwagi 1995: 93–96). That is to say, culinary hybridity was intentionally sought by the state, to build a ‘strong national body’. Such a state endeavour was complemented by popular desires for the Western style of dining. Harry Harootunian and others have already discussed how a ‘modern’ style of living modelled on the ‘Western’ experience, dubbed as ‘cultural living’ (bunka seikatsu), stirred the rise of a consumer culture during the interwar period in Japan (Harootunian 2000: 3–33; Koyama 1999: 42–61). Food was certainly the essential part of this momentum. According to Cwiertka, the authentic Western style of dining was regarded as the ‘symbol of good breeding and refinement’ and people of the middle and lower classes were urged to imitate the elite class (Cwiertka 1999: 53–54). Indeed, women’s magazines at that time enthusiastically featured recipes of Western food, often introduced by the chefs of well-known restaurants or high-class wives (Saito¯ 2002: 26–28). The Asia-Pacific War (1937–45) against the Western Allied Powers did not significantly hamper the progress of the perpetuation of Western cuisine among the national population, despite the wartime xenophobic cultural policy that prohibited the use of words of foreign origin. Rather, the shortage of food, in particular rice as the staple food, drove many Japanese to consume potatoes and bread instead, whilst homemade sources (substitute mayonnaise, tomato sauce and even Worcester sauces) and curry power were often used to disguise the poor quality of the ingredients7 (Cwiertka 2002: 19; Saito¯ 2002: 155–158; Tsurumi 1991: 229). The defeat in the Second World War and the subsequent occupation by the Allied Powers, further Westernised lifestyles for all social strata.8 For example, with the aid of the UN and US, school meals became universalised throughout the country with the emphasis on bread and milk in the aftermath of the Second World War, a period marked by severe food shortages (Ehara 1999: 56–57). Tsurumi Shunsuke, a Japanese philosopher who was educated in the US before the Second World War and who survived the wartime experience, wrote in the 1980s that the disadvantages of ‘traditional’ rice-centred meals on health were much touted in the early postwar period (Tsurumi 1991: 229–230). Indeed, one of the purposes of introducing universal school meals with bread and milk was to improve the physique of Japanese children (Ehara 1999: 57). With these incentives, studies by researchers and government documents agree that by the 1960s, a high degree of ‘eclecticism’ of Japanese food had been achieved (Cwiertka 1999: 53; Shokuryo¯ No¯gyo¯ Seisaku Kenkyu¯ Senta 2005: 12; Naikakufu 2006: 6). According to the survey result of a study group, 11

Takeda Hiroko: Nationhood and Nationalism in Discourses on Food in Contemporary Japan

conducted in 1978, on the lifestyle of its 500 members, in which Tsurumi participated, six per cent of the respondents (who typically lived in cities) ate the Japanese-style breakfast (rice, miso soup, beans/fish and pickles) (Tsurumi 1991: 231). The large-scale national survey conducted by NHK (Nippon Ho¯so¯ Kyo¯kai – the Japan Broadcasting Corporation) in 1981 provides us with a different picture, by reporting that the national average of the proportion of the total 4,740 respondents (age 16 and above, randomly selected) who eat rice for breakfast is seventy-one per cent, whilst the figure for bread was twenty-four per cent. Simultaneously, the survey also identified the following three points. First, it found that those who eat bread for breakfast tend to be amongst the younger generations, ones with high educational attainment and who live in cities. Second, more women, in particular, those in the 25–29 age group tend to prefer bread. Third, in comparison with the survey results in 1968, the proportion of bread-breakfast increased for both men and women in all age groups, and the figure for women aged 25–29 went up by twenty-three per cent (NHK Ho¯so¯ Yoron Cho¯sajo 1983: 48).9 As such, the modern ‘Japanese’ food was in essence a hybrid amalgam of foreign and local elements. Yet, it is also worth noting that such eclectic food practice (cooking and food choice) in Japan has always been marked with various representations of ‘Japaneseness’ and, in so doing, is mobilised to play out its cultural identity. As Goldstein-Gidoni rightly points out, both ‘sukiyaki’ and ‘tempura’, two ‘authentic’ Japanese dishes, were adapted from Western cuisines in the last four centuries (sukiyaki in the nineteenth century and tempura in the sixteenth century), but ‘in Japanese popular imagination it is now difficult to conceive of Japanese traditional food without ‘‘sukiyaki’’ and ‘‘tempura’’’ (Goldstein-Gidoni 2001: 77). The popular imagination is backed up by practices and presentations that emphasise the Japanese elements (Japanese-style bowls, room de´cor and waitresses wearing the Kimono in restaurants) and ‘the aura of ‘‘traditionalism’’’ is invented, confirmed and reinforced through these daily practices (Goldstein-Gidoni 2001: 77). In this way, the hybridity of the Japanese and Western elements of the invented ‘Japanese cuisine’ is never made into a melting pot, as Appadurai discusses. Instead, it tends to contrast Japaneseness with the ‘West’, and through this contributes to reproducing and strengthening the sense of cultural identity. Furthermore, the ‘Japanese element’ became more pronounced as the culinary changes progressed to the extent that it was increasingly recognised that they went ‘too far’. Radical changes that Japanese culinary practices and dietary habits underwent in a relatively short period have 12

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certainly brought about a number of issues. Interestingly, these issues have often been presented as threats and dangers posed by non-Japanese and external factors to Japanese society and its people. First, these changes coincided with the drop in Japan’s food self-sufficiency rate (sixty per cent in 1970, forty per cent in 2004) that indicates the existence of what was perceived as a major problem in Japan’s food security (Naikakufu 2006: 16). The main reason for Japan’s fragility is the constant decline of agriculture in the postwar period (Yamashita 2006: 2–5), which extant studies and government documents tend to attribute to the ‘Westernisation’ of popular dietary habits (NHK Ho¯so¯ Yoron Cho¯sajo 1983: 134; McDonald 2000: 487–488; Matsunaga 2005: 180–184; Naikakufu 2006: 17; Shokuryo¯ No¯gyo¯ Seisaku Kenkyu¯ Senta 2005: 13–14). This type of discourse posits that the diffusion of Western-style food increased the consumption of ingredients and materials that are unstable or difficult to grow on Japanese soil (grain, vegetable oil, stock farm products) whilst rice consumption, the principal crop in Japanese agriculture, reduced significantly. According to data compiled by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF), rice occupied 48.4 per cent, nearly a half, of all calories consumed by Japanese people in 1960, but the figure for 2005 was 23.3 per cent, and the reduction of rice consumption was compensated for by mainly stock farm products and vegetable oil, both mostly imported from abroad (Naikakufu 2006: 17). This relates to the second issue. The increase in the amount of imported food consumed by Japanese people and its perpetuation into everyday life has intensified general doubts over food safety. The control that the Japanese government could exercise over imported food is naturally limited, and this issue became more focused as a series of possible contaminated food cases, BSE, bird flu and residual pesticides to name but a few, became exposed to the public through the mass media. Finally, due to the changes in diet and eating habits, individual intake of protein and fat increased, in particular since the 1980s, and food experts observe that this has in turn caused health problems that hitherto had not been prevalent in Japan, for example, cardiac disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity (Naikakufu 2006: Hattori 2006; Shinozawa 2007). All in all, these discourses attempt to articulate food problems that ‘Japan’ faces and they do so by identifying problems posed by ‘foreign factors’ (Westernised diet, imported food and foreign-originated viruses). In this kind of discursive framework, the Japanese elements of the ‘imagined Japanese food’ can be located in opposition to the problematical food or culinary practices of foreign origin. Considering this, it is not a mere coincidence that the healthy eating campaign implemented by the government in the 2000s is packed with 13

Takeda Hiroko: Nationhood and Nationalism in Discourses on Food in Contemporary Japan

discourses that value the Japanese elements of the hybrid Japanese cuisine to address some issues posed by the ‘external and non-Japanese’ factors. In the next section, we are going to examine more closely contemporary official discourses of the healthy eating campaign in Japan, organised to promote the indigenous elements of the Japanese cuisine, and, in so doing, confirming and reproducing collective cultural identity in Japan. ‘Shokuiku’: Rebuilding the Healthy National Body The healthy eating campaign was voluntarily initiated by some enthusiasts led by a celebrity chef, Hattori Yukio in the early 1990s. The campaign was incorporated into the national political process through the legislation of the Basic Law for Shokuiku (literally translated, ‘nurturing through eating’) in 2005. The Nurturing through Eating campaign attempts to spread a wide range of knowledge of food, nutrition and public health via healthy eating and cooking education for Japanese children. As the First White Paper on Nurturing through Eating in 2006 delineates: It is an urgent task to promote the Nurturing through Eating campaign as a nation-wide movement, in which all Japanese people autonomously participate and play the lead role. In so doing, each Japanese person independently acquires pertinent and proper knowledge and decisionmaking ability that enables him or her to voluntarily practise a healthy lifestyle with healthy eating (Naikakufu 2006: 20). It is worth noting that the national campaign of Nurturing through Eating is not the first time in postwar Japan that the national government has expressed political interest in the organisation of the everyday lives of the people, and attempted to deploy a nation-wide movement. For example, the national government provided, in cooperation with large corporations, a multitude of support (finance, administration, personnel, moral endorsement) for the nation-wide ‘life improvement’ movement in the 1950s and 1960s, in which housewives had opportunities to learn techniques and knowledge to improve their household management through domestic work (including cooking, nutrition and sewing along with family planning) and in so doing to create ‘happy homes’ (Takeda 2005a, 2005b). Through these endeavours, a particular type of nuclear family (characterised by the gender division of labour and a limited number of children) that was prevalent from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s (Ochiai 1997) was reproduced, and that in turn contributed to the reproduction of the national political economy (Takeda 2005a). The Nurturing through Eating 14

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campaign has certainly drawn on the prior experience of the national life improvement movement and installed similar kinds of tactics to disseminate concrete knowledge and skills for the management of food, cooking practices and nutrition with its predecessor campaign, by grouping housewives in communities and providing them with opportunities to access professional support and teaching. Simultaneously, today’s healthy eating campaign was introduced into the national political process in order to tackle the acknowledged difficulty in governing food distribution and consumption caused by globalisation and the diversification of eating practices and dietary habits, as discussed above. Concretely, the national Nurturing through Eating campaign sets out the seven areas of policy implementation, and ‘to support activities to hand down Japanese food culture’ is listed as the sixth item (Naikakufu 2006: 29). The national government and sub-regional authorities bear responsibility for policy implementation, and a number of ministries (MEXT,10 MHLW11 and MAFF) are involved in organising various activities. Yet, simultaneously, the Basic Law specifies that the Nurturing through Eating campaign should be carried out as a ‘national movement’ (kokumin undo¯), in which individual Japanese are the very agents of activities of the Nurturing through Eating campaign. For this purpose, cooking and nutrition classes and other food-related events are organised and offered to families at schools and in communities, to disseminate traditional local culinary practices. The agenda of ‘handing down Japanese food culture’ was further strengthened in 2006 by the formulation of the ‘Intellectual Property Promotion Plan 2006’ (Chiteki zaisan suishin keikaku 2006). The plan was designed by a government working team to develop a strategy for promoting the ‘Japan brand’ based on ‘lifestyle’ both in and outside of Japan. It specifies ‘the fostering of a ‘‘rich food culture’’’ as one of the four main measures to achieve this goal. According to the policy, ‘with fresh and abundant agriculture and marine products, Japanese food culture has been built up by skilfully taking in both Japanese lifestyles and foreign recipes and seasoning, and hence fusing traditions and creativity. Therefore Japanese food culture is Japan’s unique intellectual and cultural property’ (Naikakufu 2006: 102). On these grounds, the ‘Nurturing through Eating’ campaign eagerly promotes the ‘Japanese element’ of Japanese food. Specifically, school meals are now organised with more emphasis on Japanese dishes, rather than the early postwar menu based on bread and milk, whilst school 15

Takeda Hiroko: Nationhood and Nationalism in Discourses on Food in Contemporary Japan

teachers are encouraged to incorporate agricultural experience into their curricula, to widen pupils’ knowledge on local dishes and products. The importance and benefit of consuming locally or domestically produced products or organic products is also stressed, not only by the government or educational institutions but also by the retail and food service industry. Moreover, in comparison with the Western diet full of protein and fat, the well-balanced ‘Japanese-style dietary life’ has now been revalued (Naikakufu 2006: 95–101; Hattori 2006: 76–85, 109–111). Yet, the most noticeable emphasis seems to be placed on rice in today’s national healthy eating campaign. As the national staple food, conventionally, rice has been loaded with a set of symbolic meanings in Japan (OnukiTierney 1993) and, indeed, the Japanese term to refer to boiled rice, gohan, also means ‘meal’, implying the centrality of this ingredient in Japanese food culture. Simultaneously, rice has been a focal point of Japan’s food policy. It still maintains a significantly high level of food self-sufficiency (ninety-five per cent), whist protective policies implemented by the national government have been heavily criticised, both internationally and domestically. Moreover, as mentioned above, the rice-centred dietary habit was regarded as a negative aspect of Japanese culinary practices at one point in the postwar history, vis-a`-vis Western cuisine. Contrary to the earlier discourses, today’s Nurturing through Eating campaign tends to give unreserved celebration to the traditional ricecentred dietary practices. To start with, the Dietary Life Guideline (Shokuseikatsu shishin) approved by the government in 2000 encourages the population to ‘make sure of eating enough cereals such as rice’ (my emphasis). Also, in the item, ‘making full use of food culture and local products, and then, sometimes try new dishes’, ‘Japan’s unique food culture’ is defined as the assortment of various cuisines, which is centred around rice and associated with food products rooted in regional climates and cultures.12 The centrality of rice is endorsed by many PR documents of the campaign, which are often decorated with photographs of bowls of warm, white boiled rice (in many cases, with various people eating rice). Such photographs are generally accompanied by written texts that explain the advantages of eating rice. The following are some samples of those texts:13 A meal with boiled rice to prevent lifestyle-related diseases. A meal with boiled rice for easy dieting. Chew rice firmly, so you are always active. 16

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Regardless of age, a meal with boiled rice to maintain your health. A meal with boiled rice to support local food production and ‘slow food’. Boiled rice is the best breakfast. Having boiled rice, your stomach remains in good condition. (‘Menus with Boiled Rice for age 40 and above’, published by JA Zen-Noh14) Eat rice every day! White rice and unpolished brown rice contain well-balanced nutrition. White rice and unpolished brown rice are full of important foodstuffs for a healthy lifestyle. It includes protein that builds bodies, carbohydrate that generates energy and vitamins that maintain body conditions (‘Rice book’ targeting school pupils, published by MAFF and JA Zen-Noh). Before any kind of work, stage or narration, I need to eat rice. Otherwise, I feel no energy. After all, meals with bread, for example sandwiches, are no good. I cannot even concentrate without eating rice (An interview with an actress who acts as a goodwill ambassador for UNDP, published in Gohan Museum Magazine, Winter 2006). I feel uneasy when I am abroad for international competitions and there is no Japanese restaurant. I was told that as an athlete in the national team who is obliged to play matches in any country, I have to prepare myself for doing my best by eating any kind of meal. But when I feel I need to do my best, eating rice helps me to gear myself up. My heart, rather than my body demands rice (An interview with a three-time Olympic gold medalist in Judo, published in Gohan Museum Magazine, Autumn 2006). Have breakfast before nine. Then, all day, be active (like flying rice grains) (The National Campaign for ‘Going Bed and Getting-up Early’ led by MEXT and other political bodies15 – see Figure 1). Whilst these discourses steadily put forward the benefits and temptations of the ‘innate’ rice-centred diet, as a healthy, well-balanced food that gives us a great deal of energy, PR documents do not forget to add a taste of 17

Takeda Hiroko: Nationhood and Nationalism in Discourses on Food in Contemporary Japan

Figure 1. Waking-up Rice

contemporary globalised Japanese society and food to their texts. The ricecentred meals tend to be presented with chopsticks and Japanese-style pottery, but often contain dishes marked by foreign influence, such as ‘Japanese-style turnip potage’ or ‘broccoli and grilled peppers sesame marinade’. The hybridity coated with ‘Japaneseness’ can be observed in the architecture and composition of the Gohan Museum, a site to promote the Nurturing and Eating campaign. Located at the Tokyo International Forum, this ultra-urban glass-covered building in central Tokyo is equipped with a mega screen that shows nostalgic and idyllic scenes of a countryside accompanied by Japanese folk music, a stylish urban cafe´ that serves typical Japanese-style homemade food and even computer games for children in which rice balls are to be saved from burning flames. Furthermore, one PR document targeting non-Japanese, entitled ‘Let’s Make a Yummy Breakfast for Ourselves’ (Figure 2), eloquently illuminates that the hybridity contains some hegemonic implications. Unlike many other PR documents of the Nurturing through Eating campaign, in this document mainly written in English (see Figure 3), two young males, one Japanese and one American, are cooking rice. We are introduced on the first page to these characters and learn that the Japanese man is a highschool graduate TV personality, whilst the American man is a Harvard graduate (who studied religion). We may wonder why educational attainments need to be mentioned in a cooking brochure, and it certainly gives us the impression that a non-Japanese with a Harvard degree may be able to learn to cook rice deliciously, confirming the uniqueness and preciousness of ‘cooking rice’. 18

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Figure 2.

Figure 3.

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Takeda Hiroko: Nationhood and Nationalism in Discourses on Food in Contemporary Japan

In reading government and PR documents of the Nurturing through Eating campaign, therefore, we are repeatedly exposed to a multitude of discourses that emphasise the excellence of healthy, uniquely Japanese food, in particular, rice-centred meals. There, the foreign-originated elements of the contemporary hybrid cuisine are carefully wrapped up in the ‘precious’ Japanese elements and we are told that eating such Japanese food contributes to maintaining and building our bodies and minds healthily. Importantly, the Nurturing through Eating campaign aims, as discussed earlier, that ‘each Japanese person independently acquires pertinent and proper knowledge and decision-making ability that enable them to voluntarily practice a healthy lifestyle with healthy eating’. In other words, the healthy, precious, uniquely Japanese food is posited as something to be practised by individuals everyday. Indeed, as mentioned earlier, Nurturing through Eating has been introduced into school curricula through which pupils as well as their parents have opportunities to learn cooking skills and food knowledge including recipes for ‘traditional Japanese food’. For example, in the ancient capital city of Kamakura (approximately sixty kilometres south of Tokyo), the local education committee that supervises schools and teaching in the area has been organising seminars in which junior high school students and their mothers learn and eat sho¯jin ryo¯ri - vegetarian food that is believed to have been developed with a Zen Buddhist influence during the time when Kamakura was the capital (1185–1333) - alongside practising Zen mediation. The seminar organiser reported in a public forum that one of the students said that the seminar was their first opportunity to know ‘there is such Japanese ¯ mura 2003: 19, my emphasis). Cooking/food seminars are also food’ (O offered by private agents and organisations through various channels of the mass media, including cooking programmes broadcast from the Gohan museum, and spread a particular idea of ‘Japan’ through Japanese food. In her recent co-publication with her mother-in-law, one famed food expert who organises a cooking school for children and mothers specifically notes the importance of teaching children the ‘sense of the four seasons innate in Japan’ through learning the traditional cooking characteristics of each season. She writes: Please let children enjoy the sense of all four seasons. Through this, children will develop a wonderful world with their unbounded imaginations. It is our parental power that raises and nurtures imaginative and affectionate children who will bolster the future Japan. I try to organise everyday menus at home whilst considering this. (Kishi and Katsura 2007: 117). 20

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The Nurturing through Eating campaign was only recently put into effect as national policy, and hence, it will be a long time before we can fully understand its outcomes. Yet, the multitude of the discourses introduced above indicate that Nurturing through Eating is functioning as a medium to propagate a particular image of ‘Japan’ based on well-known stereotypes (essentially natural four seasons/historical ‘tradition’) at the level of everyday life. Importantly, in so doing, the image of ‘natural’ and ‘traditional’ Japan is linked with the healthy reproduction and maintenance of families, in particular, children, as they are seen as the future driving force of the Japanese nation-state. At this juncture, the discourses of Nurturing through Eating can be closely linked with discourses produced by many food experts as well as civil movements working for food safety, including those that express strong disagreement with the food policies of the national government based on their understanding of ‘Japanese food’, as will be discussed in the next section. Practising the ‘Japanese’ Healthy Eating Lifestyle Citizens who engaged in civil movements against environmental pollution said that they preferred eating a rice ball containing plum pickles in the fresh air, to living in dirty air polluted by factories and eating beef steak. A rice ball is made by squashing boiled rice into a round shape, a typical example of simple traditional Japanese food. Since the 1960s, it became increasingly difficult to realise these simple wishes. Civil movements against environmental pollution are generally organised by a small number of people in their own communities, and are therefore associated with the hopes of ordinary citizens who do not join large-scale demonstrations, but stay at home (Tsurumi 1991: 234). Observers of civil movements working in the areas of environmental protection and consumer issues in Japan, including Tsurumi, have long pointed out that participants of those movements are frequently motivated by personal desires, often egoism, for improving everyday life (Tsurumi 1991: 244; Takabatake 1993: 170–171; Kurihara 2005: 144–147). Various discourses that criticise the current food and agriculture policies of the national government, produced by food experts and civil movement organisations, seem to share this tendency. For example, one food writer who has been working on the issue of agriculture chemicals starts her book as follows; 21

Takeda Hiroko: Nationhood and Nationalism in Discourses on Food in Contemporary Japan

Enter a sushi shop and sit down at the counter, wishing to have a bit of luxury for the day. In front of you, a sushi chef starts grating clean, green wasabi [Japanese horseradish] on the surface of shark skin like drawing circles, and soon crisp, fresh scent floats around. This is the moment when we really feel we are Japanese (Matsunaga 2006: 8). Then, the author reveals that the scent from freshly grated wasabi at a sushi shop is somehow different from mass-produced products available at supermarkets, as mass-produced wasabi is made out of different species of (mostly imported) horseradish and dyed green. Recently, the production of fresh Japanese wasabi has been dramatically reduced, due to the unavailability of appropriate agricultural chemicals, and consequently, prices for Japanese wasabi increased significantly, pushing it into the region of a luxury commodity that can only be purchased at an expensive sushi shop. The book portrays this episode of the unavailability of Japanese horseradish in everyday life as the starting point for investigation of the issue of agricultural chemicals in Japan (Matsunaga 2006: 8–11). The use of a substitute destroys the moment of the feeling ‘we are Japanese’. So, fresh Japanese wasabi needs to be recovered by identifying the reasons for its disappearance from the home dining table. Today’s issues regarding food safety and quality are, as discussed earlier, associated with the acknowledgement of the excessive globalisation and Westernisation of Japanese food, being typified by the decline of the food self-sufficiency rate/increase of imported food and ‘Western’ diet inclined towards protein/fat. This dichotomised framework of ‘domestic’ and ‘foreign’ is frequently applied when the current state of food safety is analysed. The most notable example here is a book series Don’t Eat, Dangerous! (Taberuna, kiken) published by an NPO (non-profit organisation), the Foundation for Safety of Food and Everyday Life (Shokuhin to kurashi no anzen kikin). The book series has been attracting wide public attention in Japan, and enjoys inordinate popularity having gone through two editions since 2002 (Nihon Shison Kikin 2002; Shokuhin to Kurashi no Anzen Kikin 2005). In each edition, interestingly, the book places a special focus on beef and citrus fruits (oranges, grapefruit and lemons) imported from the US, that is to say, the food that has been used as the bargaining tool in the negotiations over the trade conflicts between two countries. Furthermore, the section on ‘lemons’ in the newer edition is headed by the following sentences. ‘No food is more political than lemon. And that ‘‘politics’’ is corroding our health’ (Shokuhin to Kurashi no 22

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Anzen Kikin 2005: 112). According to the explanations in the book, lemons imported from California are generally sprayed with an agricultural chemical called 2.4-D, which was the main constituent of the chemical defoliant used in the Vietnam War. The criticism by the author of the national government that has granted the import of such agricultural products is unsparing: But the (then) Ministry of Health and Welfare did not act on the illegal chemicals, since the US would have reacted politically if a ban had been put in place. The mass media described the incident as a ‘Japan–US lemon war’. But the Japanese government did nothing, whist civil organisations and the mass media investigated the case. The US government listed the accusation of Japanese consumers and civil organisations in the section of ‘trade barriers’ [in the agenda used for the US–Japan trade negotiations]. Then, not only the industry but also the government and embassy condemned us, as a part of the trade issue (Shokuhin to Kurashi no Anzen Kikin 2005: 113). After commenting on the government’s inability to tackle the issue, the book then recommends its readers to use domestically produced citrus fruits, as they are free from residual pesticides. It goes on to say, ‘use different Japanese citrus creatively, instead of lemons. This will improve not only the degree of safety but also the quality of dishes’ [my emphasis] (Shokuhin to Kurashi no Anzen Kikin 2005: 115). Here, ‘delicious’ and ‘healthy’ Japanese ingredients are described as an antidote to resist the hegemonic power of the US and the impotence of the Japanese government. In so doing, our healthy bodies will recover, and so will the joys of everyday life. In a sense, we can observe an ironical example of ‘Nurturing through Eating in practice’, that is operating against the national government. Individual Japanese voluntarily exercise their decision-making abilities over food, based on relevant knowledge, but in so doing, the national government, which takes the role of information provider in Nurturing through Eating has become the recipient of fierce criticism. This ironical consequence suggests, on the one hand, an ambivalence in the biopolitical governing system in which opportunities for resistance can be found as an integral part of power relationships (Foucault 1983). Yet, on the other hand, the discourses by food experts and civil organisations introduced above also reveal that the critical eye towards the national government is firmly grounded in domestically 23

Takeda Hiroko: Nationhood and Nationalism in Discourses on Food in Contemporary Japan

produced ‘Japanese food’, confirming the preciousness of Japanese food for Japanese people vis-a`-vis foreign products, and through this, even critical discourse against the national government is absorbed into a cycle of reproducing the national. One midwife who has been working on the promotion of ‘natural birth’ as opposed to medicalised labour based on national medical policy, eloquently articulates this ambivalent but dynamic process by making an analogy between labour and agriculture. In order to have ‘good labour’, it is important to prepare the maternal body for giving birth, just as farmers prepare soil for the next crops, and in order to do so, the Westernised dietary habits of contemporary Japan need to be reversed into a more traditional Japanese style diet with boiled rice. Rice-centred Japanese-style meals help young mothers to produce abundant breast milk of good quality (Nishinihon Shinbunsha 2005: 18–23). All in all, Japanese food, accompanied by ‘nature’ in Japan, will contribute to realising a ‘better reproduction’ of the bodies of Japanese people. In this very sense, the critical discourses against the government’s policy grounded on ‘Japanese food’ has resonance with the nationalist sentiment expressed through the national healthy eating campaign. Conclusion At the point of writing this article, the production of discourses in the Nurturing through Eating campaign, as well as criticism towards the national government’s food and agriculture policies, still seems to be growing. Moreover, the popular interest in food is not only catered for by these two types of discourse, but also by numerous TV programmes, magazines, newspapers, private/public cooking courses or even computer game software. We live in the midst of food discourses and, in so doing, are supposed to organise our dietary habits and culinary practices, just like the Victorians did their sexuality, as described by Foucault (Foucault 1978). In other words, we are expected to practise and perform food discourses grounded in cultural nationalism, and through this, our bodies and minds are reproduced in the ‘Japanese’ way. Healthy Japanese food contributes to building a healthy Japanese nation. There, nihonjinron (the theory of Japaneseness) based on food is completed.16 Of course, the issue of how a particular set of discourses is performed by individuals is a different matter from that of what it means: some are able or willing to perform what is expected, others are not. In the latter case, the real effects of disciplinary discourses should be observed, but this point deserves to be fully explored in a different paper. 24

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Going through various discourses on food, disseminated through the national campaign and the mass media in contemporary Japan, one point to which our attention is drawn is the frequent use of well-used stereotypes (white, warm boiled rice as the symbol of Japanese food, sushi, a Judo athlete, Americans, citizen/government relationships and so on) in a similar way in which the author of National Dignity talks about ‘edamame’. There, the semiotic relationships tend to be fixed, confirming and reinstating our understanding of Japanese food. Kayama has pointed out that discourses expressing ‘petit nationalism’ tend to be very plain and simple – they are plain and simple to the extent that she feels the language itself is impoverished and only functions as a labelling device (Kayama and Fukuda 2003: 39–45). Considering the performative elements of the food discourses then, perhaps we need to ponder on the implications of performing impoverished discourses. Overall, the food discourses contribute to reproducing the bodies of the nation and, in so doing, the national body is reproduced, whilst incorporating dissident voices, despite the intrinsically hybrid nature of Japanese food culture. At the same time, the progress of globalisation tends to call for more emphasis on the ‘Japanese’ element of hybridity to reinforce national coherence and integrity.17 In this sense, the food discourses appear to be a very effective tool of biopolitical governing for maintaining and developing the nation-state through taking care of the national population. ‘Delicious food in a beautiful country’ still resides at the centre of the catalogue of the discourses on cultural nationalism in Japan. Notes 1

This project is conducted as a part of the ‘Changing Families, Changing Food’ programme funded by the Leverhulme Trust (c. £1.2m). The author would like to thank the Leverhulme Trust for their generous support (£6,000 for the ‘Japanese families’ project) that enabled me to carry out field trips to Japan; Peter Jackson for organising the programme; Glenn Hook, Hugo Dobson and Wilhelm Vosse for their comments and help; Jane Garret and Tim Kelly for language assistance; and finally V. E. Teo and the anonymous reviewers for their comments and editorial support. 2 The original Japanese title of the song can be translated as ‘I Look up as I Walk’. 3 Following convention, the family name precedes the given name in Japanese (including my own name) unless the British convention is preferred by the author. Long vowels are represented by macrons except in cases where the words are conventionally used without them (for example, ‘Tokyo’). 4 In Japan, it is said that ‘sukiyaki’ was Kenny Ball’s favourite dish. This is another anecdote surrounding the song. 5 Abe published the book when he was regarded as the successor to Koizumi Jun’ichiro whose premiership lasted for more than four years (the third longest after the Second World

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War) and hence the books was received as Abe’s manifesto as the ‘Prime Minister in Waiting’. 6 ¯ Oe Sumi, who organised the national curricula of domestic science in Japan, was sent to study at the University of London in 1911 as a government-funded student to acquire then ‘cutting-edge’ knowledge of domestic science (Kashiwagi 1995: 75–76). ‘Domestic ¯ e significantly science’ education was carried out in the school system from 1880s but O modernised and systematised this knowledge. 7 Towards the end of the Second World War, food rations seriously deteriorated and many people suffered from starvation. In such circumstances, for example, women’s magazines explored ways in which wild grass or used tea leaves could be cooked for eating (Saito¯ 2002: 145–152). 8 The Occupation force led by the US regarded the improvement of everyday life as the crucial means to democratise the Japanese state and society. Based on this recognition, it actively propagated the American way of life by showing documentary films of family life in the US and sent ‘life improvement instructors’ to local communities. Through these endeavours, for example, old-fashioned Japanese kitchens were replaced by Western-style kitchens at home (Asahi Shinbun Gakugeibu 1995: 16–34). 9 As the state-funded national broadcasting centre, NHK has been conducting a series of large scale public surveys on different topics, which is available through their publications. 10 Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. 11 Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. Prior to the legislation of the Basic Law for Shokuiku in 2005, MHLW released in 2000 a policy plan entitled ‘Healthy Japan 21’ (Kenko¯ Japan 21), which encourages individuals to manage their health in a sound manner and, in so doing, attempts to reduce the number of people who are in need of care and improve the quality of life (Ko¯sei, May 2001: 8–9). There, healthy eating is clearly located as one measure to realise a healthy lifestyle. 12 The Japanese text of the Guildeline can be found at the MAFF website (http:// www.maff.go.jp/soshiki/kambou/joutai/onepoint/public/naiyo.html, accessed on 5 November 2007). No official translation is available at the point of writing. 13 PR documents to sample discourses were collected at Gohan (Rice/Meal) Museum in central Tokyo, which was set up to promote the Nurturing through Eating campaign. The museum regularly hosts various public events for families and school pupils in which TV personalities, athletes and well-known chefs are involved. 14 JA Zen-Noh is the national agriculture cooperative in Japan. 15 The campaign was organised in cooperation with MEXT and other political bodies (national and sub-regional governments) as well as the Nurturing through Eating enthusiasts, such as Hattori, to promote the importance of eating breakfast every day. 16 For the discussion on nihonjinron as a form of cultural nationalism, see Yoshino (1992). 17 For the counter-argument of the thesis of the nation-state withering away under globalisation, for example, see Gamble (2000).

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Takeda Hiroko completed her PhD at the School of East Asian Studies, University of Sheffield, UK and, after having taught at Cardiff University, returned to the School as a Lecturer in Japanese Studies. She is concurrently Director of the research cluster on social change and transition in East Asia at the National Institute of Japanese Studies, an international Centre of Excellence between the Universities of Sheffield and Leeds. Her research interests include gender and politics/political economy in Japan and East Asia, social and political theories and biopolitics. She is the author of The Political Economy of Reproduction in Japan: Between Nation-State and Everyday Life (RoutledgeCurzon, 2005), ‘Governance through the Family in Japan: Governing the Domestic’, in Glenn D. Hook (ed.), Contested Governance in Japan: Sites and Issues (RoutledgeCurzon, 2005), ‘Gendering the Japanese Political System: the Gender-Specific Pattern of Political Activity and Women’s Political Participation’, Japanese Studies, vol. 26 no. 2 (September), 2006. Her latest article is co-authored with Glenn D. Hook, ‘ ‘‘Selfresponsibility’’ and the Nature of the Postwar Japanese State: Risk through the Looking Glass’, Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 33, No. 1 (2007): pp. 93–123.

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